Power is an addictive drug that shifts from serving dreams to serving itself.

Evidence

But power is not an instrument that its possessor can use with impunity. It is a drug that creates in the user a need for larger and larger dosages. And Moses was a user. At first, for a decade or more after his first sip of real power in 1924, he continued to seek it only for the sake of his dreams. But little by little there came a change. Slowly but inexorably, he began to seek power for its own sake. More and more, the criterion by which Moses selected which city-shaping public works would be built came to be not the needs of the city’s people, but the increment of power a project could give him. Increasingly, the projects became not ends but means—the means of obtaining more and more power. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 96

Categorization

• XREF: Frames the power-corrupts arc that a piece on institutional capture could draw on; parallels Adorno’s point that reason becomes mere self-preservation. — connects to: Power can be tasted for its own sake, separate from any agenda — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 619; Power itself is reinforcing because it grants rewards and avoids punishments; Addicts choose addiction; the substance is an alibi for the drive — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 128 (+6 more)
• SEED: Angle: using Moses as a case study for how any reformer’s instrumental powers—clean water boards, transit authorities, planning commissions—quietly become ends in themselves.
• recurring: this claim recurs 3 times within its source

Broader Connections

• Power generates the will of the power-holder rather than serving it #expands (0.92)
• Power generates the will it seems to express rather than serving a preexisting one. #expands (0.90) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 618
• Power itself is reinforcing because it grants rewards and avoids punishments #corroborates (0.85)
• Rapid ascent to power can exhaust ordinary ambitions and motives #exemplifies (0.80) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2381
• Addicts choose addiction; the substance is an alibi for the drive #complicates (0.78) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 128
• Power produces subjects and desires rather than merely repressing them #expands (0.75) — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 131
• Revolutionary euphoria can function like a drug with a dangerous comedown #expands (0.72) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 913